The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Anyway to turn of lights of additional components on laptop to save battery?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Juppy, Apr 11, 2009.

  1. Juppy

    Juppy Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    32
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Is there anyway to turn of the lights of the additional components in laptops to save battery?

    I'm using an Acer Aspire 6930Z and I find the blue neon light of the power button and etc including the Acer logo behind can be attractive and yet be a distraction at night and it drains battery too.

    Is there anyway to turn it off through a custom BIOS or what?
     
  2. jackluo923

    jackluo923 Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    1,038
    Messages:
    3,071
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    105
    The only light that you should turn off on your laptop is the LCD CCFL backlight. Turning off other light will only gain you less a second of battery life since they uses very little energy.

    Instead of turning off lights.. turn off unused hardware devices like extra usb ports, vga port, card readers...etc from hardware management tool and it'll save you couple minutes to half an hour of battery life.
     
  3. Juppy

    Juppy Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    32
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Er, do you mean going to Device Manager? If so, turning them off = pressing disable?
     
  4. jackluo923

    jackluo923 Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    1,038
    Messages:
    3,071
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    105
    opps. device manager... that's waht i meant. either disable or uninstall.
     
  5. Juppy

    Juppy Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    32
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Er, wow, I only have 3 USB ports and so many USB root hubs are listed. How would I know which do I need to disable, I'm only using one port for the mouse.
     
  6. reemreem

    reemreem Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Er, do you mean going to Device Manager? If so, turning them off = pressing disable?
     
  7. jackluo923

    jackluo923 Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    1,038
    Messages:
    3,071
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    105
    Check which roothub is controlling your mouse by looking the "power" tab in the usb root hub properties. Disable all other unused root hubs.
     
  8. Jaguar

    Jaguar Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    3
    Messages:
    185
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Hmm. I don't know about disabling unused usb ports. If the port is not drawing any power, then its not ? Have you undervolted ? That's the single most effective thing you can do to conserve energy with software.
     
  9. MidnightSun

    MidnightSun Emodicon

    Reputations:
    6,668
    Messages:
    8,224
    Likes Received:
    231
    Trophy Points:
    231
    You'll probably get like 5 minutes of extra battery life if you turn off unused USB and other ports and lights, if it is even possible (I do not think it is on your particular laptop). Generally, I do not think it is worth the hassle (you'll have to reenable your USB ports again if you plug in anything).
     
  10. jackluo923

    jackluo923 Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    1,038
    Messages:
    3,071
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    105
    In general, about half of those usb root hubs will never get used. That's because they're not connected to anything. They're basically a hub on the chipset with nothing connected. If you have 5 root hubs on your laptop, you get 10 usb ports from the root hubs. If you don't have 10 usb ports on your computer, it's likely that 2 or 3 usb root hubs are not used. You can turn them off and you'll never notice it's disabled unless you do internal hardware modding.
     
  11. stevezachtech

    stevezachtech Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    14
    Messages:
    348
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    The lights are not very significant in terms of power consumptions, just use a lamp to compensate with the annoying light.